Returning to Biblical Authority in the Church

It seems that the notion that the scriptures are authoritative for Christians is constantly under assault. It has been my concern that confidence in the Bible as the Word of God is continually being eroded to the point that people are beginning to wonder if any of the traditional Protestant confessional statements concerning the nature of scripture are still relevant for today. In liberal churches it has long become accepted that the Bible is not completely authoritative for Christians. That should be expected given the liberal belief that the bible contains errors and is self contradictory at points. What is really disheartening is the position that many conservative and Evangelical Christians are taking concerning the nature of biblical authority. While the newer positions among Evangelicals continue to affirm the trustworthiness of the scriptures, most of the time much effort is spent to deny that all of scripture is applicable to all believers. One of the most tragic positions taken by many contemporary Evangelicals is that the scriptures are culture and history bound and are therefore not always applicable to the contemporary context that we live in. To be certain,the biblical authors lived in specific historical situations and in some way reflected the cultures of their times. This cannot be denied. It is one thing to accept the fact that the biblical authors had specific viewpoints, it is quite another to assert that their historicity and cultural specificity have bearing on the doctrine of inspiration. I believe that God used the historical situations and cultural viewpoints of the biblical writers sovereignly to get across His viewpoint. Their cultural location in no way impairs on their ability to communicate God's truth to us. Thus while technically the notion of a Pauline theology is not inaccurate, in finality Paul's theology is God's theology because God shaped Paul in certain ways to be the vehicle of His truth. If Paul's cultural location and historicity prevents him from speaking to the whole church at all times, then we have a serious problem to address. How do we know which verses are universally binding and which ones are not? I submit to you that most of what is happening on the hermeneutical front is arbitrary. Thus we have elevated our opinions are theoretically equal with and pragmatically superior to that of the written Word. In much of the contemporary debate over the meaning and application of the scriptures to the Christian church, it is obvious that contemporary knowledge and contemporary cultural, philosophical, and scientific outlooks are given more weight than Christian scripture and time tested interpretation of it. If we are going to figure out how to apply Christian teaching in the Christian church we have to return to the belief that all scripture is relevant and binding on the church and just not the parts we want. For example, if the current secular epistemological framework lends to the conclusion that all behaviors are equally moral we must question that on the basis of what the scriptures teach and resist efforts to relativize morality for sake of being progressive. In all areas of life there is a final authority. Science has its methods that every scientist must use in order to conduct valid research. So for Christians, the final authority is the Word of God. Without that belief we might as well call ourselves some other name. Let's return to being confident in the Word of God and let's return to a belief that submission to the authority of scripture is an integral part of the Christian life.

Recovering a Sense of the Holy in our Churches.

Last year before I moved to the Midwest, I saw a sign displayed at one of the local churches down South. Now I am not generally a fan of slogans on these signs but this one caught my attention. Simply put the sign stated "God's holiness reveals man's depravity. I thought that was a powerful illustration of biblical truth. The American church in general and the Black American church in particular has, in my opinion, lost a sense of the holy. Growing up as I did in the rural southern context, I still remember a time when Black American Christians had a sense of reverence for God. Even though much of what we practiced may have looked like folk morays to many others, the fact of the matter is that Black Christians used to have a sense of the sacred that seems very much missing today. Even as a child I remember how children seemed to innately understand the seriousness of the worship experience. We used to be silent at the appropiate times and we sometimes cried when we saw our parents get touched around the altar. We somehow knew that God was different than all else and that He was worthy of our serious attention. This seems to be missing in the contemporary Black church context. Just like the broader American Christian culture, our worship services today seem to be built on the assumption that worship is supposed to be a form of entertainment. Although I did not like R.C. Sproul's "The Holiness of God" because of all of its tangental illustrations, I think that the heart of the issue is the holiness of God. We have lost a sense of the holy in our churches because we have forgotten about God's main attribute, his holiness. In the Old Testament, God is proclaimed to be different than any other gods. The gods of the ancient near east were immoral gods who were worshipped by many abhorent practices consistent with their character. Israel's God was distinct in that He was perfectly holy in all of his nature. This is best illustrated in Isaiah when he saw that vision of God's holiness that also showed Isaiah that he had unclean lips. That God is holy is something we must always keep in mind when dealing with Him. That is why we are admonished in the Ten commandments to not take His name in vain and to never desecrate the Sabbath but rather keep it holy. Because God is holy, everything around him should reflect his holiness. One of the biggest problems in the church today is the belief that holiness in the lives of believers is optional and just a better way of life rather than an essential part of the Christian experience. The doctrine of sanctification is rarely preached in modern churches. When we look carefully at sanctification we see that it has two aspects that are both necessary for us to become holy. First we must be separated from sin in all of its various forms, then we must be separated unto God. It is not enough to reform behavior, it is vital that we have a transformation of the heart. As Jeremiah illustrates, the heart is desperately wicked. As David declares, we are shapen in iniquity and conceived in sin. As Jesus clearly taught, from the heart springs forth the issues of life and it is what is in the heart that defiles us. So we need to be regenerated in order to live holy lives. It is rather unfortunate that the language of imputation is missing from the modern pulpit. All throughout Paul's epistles the language of imputation is used to show how we obtain righteousness. Since our righteousness is as filthy rags we have nothing to offer God. So God has become our righteousness through Jesus Christ who bore the wrath of God on our behalf. Him that knew no sin became sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in Christ This is beautiful that we who are Adam's posterity and have inherited his guilt and pollution can be redeemed from both by the blood of the lamb and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. So we no longer have to be separated from God by our sins but can be in union with Him through Christ. As the old him states, "be of sin the double cure, save from wrath and make me pure". God's people are to be a holy people. He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world so that we can be holy like He is. True, our holiness is only relative and cannot approach that of God but still the New Birth produces genuine and recognizable fruit in believers. Though the struggle with sin continues throughout the life of believers we can rest assured that as we strip of the old and put on the new, as we mortify our members, as we walk in the Spirit we are becoming more and more holy by identification with Christ, by being continually cleansed by his blood, and by constantly being led by the Holy Spirit. To be a believer is to be a holy nation and a royal priesthood reflective of the holiness of God. We must return to biblical preaching in our churches, emphasizing the holiness of God, the reality of our depraved condition, and the ultimate solution of becoming righteous through Christ. Then we will see revival in our churches and God will heal the land.

The Need for Reformation in the Black American Church

It has been nearly three weeks since the Federal government released a study that revealed that one in every four American teenage girls has an STD. Among African Americans, the study reveals and even more alarming rate of about 47%. This is too much. Because the overwhelming majority of Black Americans regularly attend a Black church with roots in either the Reformation or the first or second Great Awakening, this is a sad commentary on the state of things in Black America. I am not a conservative reactionary who thinks that all of our problems are individualistic in nature, I recognize the sociological and economic conditions that adversely affect the flourishing of Black life. Black life is under assault in the American context and there seems to be no way to get around this problem if we are going to be honest. Certainly the deindustrialization of our economy has negatively affected the Black community, especially our beleagured Black men. This has made the destruction of the Black family a serious problem for the contemporary context. Nonetheless, we cannot afford to ignore the moral implications of comparing Black family life in the 1960's to today's context. The last time I checked, Black out of wedlock childbirth was around 23% in the early 1960's but has reached the unbelievable rate of 67% today. For me, despite the socio-economic realities that has helped to exacerbate the problem, this is symptomatic of a real moral crisis in the Black community. The center of Black life since slavery has been the historic Black church. Because of this simple fact, I fault the Black church in part for the conditions that we find ourselves in. To be truthful, things have never been perfect in our churches. I think that Marx's critique of Christianity as the opiate of the masses applies to much of what happens in the Black church today. I can never forget the scene from "A Lesson Before Dying" in which the Black pastor states that he lies every Sunday just to ease the pain of Black suffering. For many of us, this is the real reason we go to church, to be recharged for a brutal experience in the world. While I am not against the uplift motif in the church we must remember that the primary purpose of the church is the proclamation of the gospel and the edification of the body of Christ. That the Black churches in general shy away from taking official stances on the types of moral situations that adversely affect Black life is shameful. There are many Black pastors who are preaching the gospel, who affirm the sufficiency of the holy scriptures, and the all sufficiency of Christ but many more see the church as primarily a social institution whose role is positive cultural affirmation. For me, as Black Christians we must positively affirm that the Bible is the very Word or God and that it is profitable for doctrine in the church. Indeed, no doctrine should be taught other than the Apostle's doctrine and revealed in holy scripture. That Christ alone, by grace alone, through faith alone is the way to salvation should be clearly taught in all of our churches. I am not against our traditional forms of worship. I especially love our prayer tradition and our traditional gospel music but I must say that the center of Protestant worship is not singing and not even prayer but preaching. As Paul states so poignantly in Corinthians the gospel is foolishness to those who are perishing but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. We need preachers who will return to faithful exposition of the scriptures and accurately reflect the teaching of the scriptures. I am not against whooping or tuning up but gravy should never be the center of the message just the unadulterated preaching of the gospel of Christ for the conversion of non believers and the feeding of the believers. Until we have wholesale reformation in the Black church we will not see our community experience true healing. We need to once again explore the depths of the holiness of God and the reality of our utter depravity before him. We have forgotten that our righteousness is as filthy rags and there is none righteous, no not one. We must must once again declare the absolute necessity of the New Birth in our church. Our problem is not reformation of moral conduct as such but the need for regeneration which produces moral reformation as a secondary effect. Let us pray that the historic Black church will return to the foundation of Christ and the scriptures for our doctrine and practice. Then the weak can say that I am strong, and the lame can say that I am healed. God bless those faithful sheperds who have not veered from the holy scriptures and the doctrines of Christ. May they continue to proclaim boldy the gospel of Christ and may those who are now hirelings and not sheperds come to the great shepard and bishop of our souls so that they too may proclaim the glorious gospel of Christ.